


illogical

by Hugabug



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Love Confessions, M/M, Soulmates, what's not to love?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 03:25:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14127060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hugabug/pseuds/Hugabug
Summary: anon:Hi!! Can I request a soulmate AU for Shyan? Any specifics of your choice!! (Good luck with your essays, I’m in the same boat lmao)anon:omgggg can we pretty please have something about shane falling in love with ryan (over and over, if you want) while he’s going through loads of ryan’s VOs in the interest of Operation: Destroy Ryan Through the Hot Daga ??? i will owe you my dog’s first child(In this Soulmate AU the universe is petty so you’re born with a timer, but it doesn’t count down to when you meet your soulmate or when you lose them– in fact the numbers change so often it isn’t even a timer. It only reaches 00:00:00:00 when you finally realize that a certain person in your life is actually your soulmate. Or something like that.I don’t know. The universe is messy, as always. Shane can attest to this.)





	illogical

**Author's Note:**

> I usually don't post my answers to prompts on tumblr but I'm really proud of this one.

The universe is weird.

One moment, he had been lounging about in an empty conference room, rewatching uncut versions of Unsolved in hopes of pulling the biggest “Annoy Ryan Bergara” scheme he’d ever cooked up, and in the next, his wrist is beeping.

He’s at zero.

This new information jolts him into proper sitting position, his laptop teetering hard enough on his lap for him to move it to the table. On screen, Ryan’s head is bowed, reading from his file in his theory voice, and Shane catches his gaze lingering on the image for just a moment longer before dragging itself to the numbers flashing, lazily, on the skin of his wrist. The zeroes stare at him, condescendingly, like little eyes, and either he’s been slipped something hallucinogenic or he’s hit his head somewhere because he’s pretty sure he was at 7 years this morning.

He blinks once. Twice. Three times.

Upon the fourth, he rubs at his eyes with his other hand and when the numbers stays firmly at zero, Shane stops pretending that this all might be a dream. 

_“What do you mean that makes a lot of sense?”_

His own voice startles him, forcing his gaze to go back to his laptop where the uncut version of the Natalie Wood episode is still running. He had chosen the angle that only focused on Ryan’s face for this one, so his voice is coming from somewhere off-camera and seeing Ryan flush and stumble on his sentences calms him down, somewhat.

Ryan is the flustered one. He’s the flustered one. Not Shane.

_“You’re a pretty logical guy, Shane.”_  Ryan says, stuttering.  _“Love is a pretty illogical thing. Doesn’t seem to be your kinda ride.”_

_“Love isn’t an illogical thing.”  
_

Ryan laughs, nervously.  _“What do you mean love isn’t an illogical thing? It strikes when it wants to and it doesn’t even give you time to breathe when it does. On top of that, it makes you do stupid, illogical shit. How is that something up your alley?”_

_“T-The numbers mean something.”_ Now it’s Shane’s turn to sound flustered, and he doesn’t even need to see himself to know that he’s probably flushed a dark red. Ryan, though, doesn’t look at smug as Shane had initially thought he did. He smirks for a second, and then suddenly, his eyes go soft around the edges and his smile turns fond and warm, like a well worn blanket on an icy evening. Shane likes that smile. He likes it best when it’s directed at him.  _“I like to think that they… quantify love, or at least a part of it, ya know?”_

Here, Ryan shakes his head.  _“Yeah but they have their foundations in human intuition. They’re based on fickle, changing environments and emotions. Isn’t that, in itself, illogical?”_

_“But the right-ness you feel when you’re with them? And that… deep ache you get when they aren’t with you? That’s a natural progression of logic, isn’t it? If they make you happy when they’re around, then you’ll miss them when they’re gone?”  
_

_“Again, that could be circumstances and environment.”_

_“Why does it sound like you’re the one who doesn’t know how love works?”_

It had been an off-handed comment said in jest and, at the time, Ryan had laughed. But now, reviewing the footage of it, Shane catches Ryan’s breath hitch and his eyes dart toward the floor, head bowing in almost mourning. He waves a hand in the air to accompany his exaggerated shrug and on his wrist, numbers flash a dark red. Shane pauses the video.

3567 days, 18 hours, 32 mins, and 12 seconds.

His cursor hovers over them, cautiously.

Shane looks at his wrist again.

What had he been thinking, before this? He had been close to napping, if he was being honest, nearly lulled to sleep by the cadence of Ryan’s voice and the lunch that still sat heavy in his belly. With his both his ear phones on and the white noise of an empty room around him, there had been no other sound available to him apart from his occasional laughter and Ryan’s voice– nothing out of the ordinary. Ryan talking has become the sound track of his every day, almost to the point that he feels off whenever he doesn’t hear it. Only this time, he was alone in a conference room with a recording and not the real thing.

Come to think of it– he hasn’t seen Ryan the whole day, not since the other man had hastily ended their face time call in a fit of sudden and unknown panic last night. He hadn’t texted or called Shane to tell him what had gone wrong and when Shane had come to work this morning, there had been a note on his desk, indicating that the other man had been pulled into another meeting. Shane had figured that he should probably follow him into that meeting– in the end, however, he hadn’t, being pulled instead into another stray video put together by one of the junior producers. He’d only been released around lunch time, where Steven and Jen had ambushed him into trying the shiny new food truck just around the corner. When he came back, Ryan still hadn’t been at their desk– no note this time– and Shane had…

The numbers beep again, finally going still after blinking for so long, and again, Shane stares.

_Oh_.

Shane had felt… empty, hadn’t he?

He had felt untethered and without anchor, floating in a dark sea of lonesome he didn’t quite realize he was drowning in until Ryan’s voice overtook his senses. Ryan had pulled him in, lulled him into a sense of safety in a way only he can accomplish. Even with just a recording of his voice, he had managed to bring Shane back from the recesses of a day without him.

Even when he hadn’t been here, Ryan had been  _right_.

Shane removes his ear phones. Brushes a thumb over his timer. “ _Ryan_.”

And like a serendipitous turn of fate, Ryan’s voice answers. “Shane?”

The sliding door in front of him wheels back a fraction and this startles Shane so bad he stands from his chair and slams his laptop shut, as if he had just been caught watching porn at work or something. Flustered, he calls out, “Don’t come in!” and the partial form of Ryan Bergara in the hallway halts altogether, wide eyed and surprised.

“I-I’m sorry!” he apologizes, just as flustered. He doesn’t close the door though, leaves it half-open and hides behind the rest of it instead. His sudden disappearance from view makes Shane’s chest ache, and he’s sure it isn’t just because he’d missed him the entire day. “Sara said she saw you come in here, I just– I wanted to…”

He trails off.

Shane’s wrist twinges.

“I wanted to apologize.” Ryan says after a moment’s silence. He sounds shy, shier than Shane had ever heard him, and his voice pulls Shane in like a magnet. Quietly, he makes it around the long conference table as Ryan continues. “I’ve been… avoiding you today. Not because you’re… you. There’s nothing wrong with you– even though I’m pretty sure I’d avoid you any day– Wait, no, that isn’t right. Not a good joke. I take that back. I’m not avoiding you, I swear.”

Despite the situation, Shane finds it in himself to chuckle. He reaches the door but makes no move to open it. He’s still out of breath, and the discovery that the other man just across this thin barrier might be his  _everything_  still sits, new and noisy, at the back of his mind. Taking another step forward isn’t a good idea in this scenario.

Instead, he lays a hand over where he thinks Ryan’s might be and fancies he could feel the other’s warmth through the wood.

“I… I couldn’t avoid you. Even if I tried.” Ryan says, in almost a whisper. “I just… I was thinking, yesterday, when we were talking to each other and I was in bed and you were in bed. I remember thinking, ‘Gosh, this would be so much easier if Shane was just, you know,  _here_ next to me and not a fifteen minute drive away,’ you know? I was talking to you, but you weren’t… you weren’t there with me. I couldn’t even see you properly, because your front camera sucks, and I couldn’t… I couldn’t touch you– it sounds weird, I know but…”

He pauses. Shane takes a risk and steps forward.

After another moment, Ryan continues.

“Shane, that was the worst part.” he says in a laugh that sounds out of place. “I couldn’t feel you there, even when I was talking to you and we were doing our thing, we were doing a bit. I… It wasn’t enough. I wanted you where I co-could… hold you. Or, or feel you and actually hear your breathing in real time. I– You.”

In his chest, Shane can hear his heart beating  _ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump_  hard against his sternum. He takes another step and stands now, inches away from the door, and his fingers itch to pull it back. Is Ryan… Is he…?

“ _Ryan_.” he breathes.

And one of Ryan’s hands, cautiously hooks its fingers around the door. “Shane, I–” he chokes out. “I missed you, big guy. Even when we were talking. Even when we spent the whole day together. I missed you because… because you weren’t there and I… My timer–

Shane feels the air leave him.

He opens the door.

The wood slams, hard, into the door jamb as the wheels squeak against metal, revealing Ryan, staring up at him with wide eyes and a flush that crawls all the way down his neck. The hand he had hooked around the door was now aloft, left there due to Shane’s sudden move, and without preamble, Shane grabs it and uses the element of surprise to pull him into the room.

Ryan stumbles in, falls, ungracefully, into Shane’s open arms and Shane wastes no time in pulling his soul mate close to him.

“ _Ryan_ ,” he says, burying his face into the crook of his neck, lips at his pulse point. “I missed you, too.”

A beep resounds, this time from Ryan’s own wrist, and when they both look down, the zeroes settle.

“Huh,” Ryan mumbles, staring at his timer before lifting Shane’s opposite wrist to stare at his. Shane lets him, watches as Ryan drags his thumb across dark numbers a couple of times, always checking to see if any of it has rubbed off into his own skin. After a couple of tries and Shane’s zeroes stay, Ryan lets out another sound. Strangled. Happy. Culminating in a singular, breathless, “Oh,  _Shane._ ”

Shane laughs, even when he feels his eyes tear up just a bit. “Looks like we both don’t know how love works.”

Ryan’s answering grin is  _stunning_. “Shut up and kiss me, you idiot.”

The universe is weird.

But as he cups Ryan’s face in his hands and Ryan’s fingers curl, possessively, around the flaps of his collar, his lips a hair’s breadth away from Shane’s own, Shane can’t find it in himself to complain.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr ver.](http://en-sam-malas.tumblr.com/post/172344754465/hi-can-i-request-a-soulmate-au-for-shyan-any)


End file.
